Status of Women Committee on Feb. 7th, 2007

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

No, it's a feminist concept. We do not agree with that. We think that wages should be determined by merit, by experience, and by the training. We do not think that equal value.... How do you equate a parking attendant's job with a secretary's? It's not possible, it's subjective. That is the very reason Canada had to put a reservation on equal pay in the CEDAW document. That's why the International Labour Organization can't, because it's subjective and it's not something that's acceptable. We fought against that from the very beginning, saying it's a feminist concept that is not practical. Wages should be paid on a person's ability, skill, and training, but certainly not because they're equated to somebody else in some other area entirely.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You talked about professionals in Canada, women having reached professional status. Were you aware that even in female-dominated professions in Canada, women still make less on average than their male counterparts?

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

Yes. And do you know why that is? Because women work differently from men. We have a different work schedule. For example, you'll find that 59% of the medical graduates in fact in 2005 were female. And what do they take? They go into family medicine. They don't go into high-paying orthopedic surgery. Women in law, they're leaving because they have family commitments. For example, 57% of the law graduates are now women, 59% of medical graduates are women, but the vast majority of women are still going into the other fields of teaching, service industry, and nursing because it suits them because of family commitments. That's what women prefer. Most of the part-time workers are women, because it's what they want. And because women have a different work schedule, more women drop out—

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

Most women drop out of their professions, and it's because we don't work in the same way as men do—

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm sorry, Ms. Landolt, I was a professional teacher, and I can assure that I worked far harder than most.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

I'm sure you do. But many women leave because they have family commitments. They don't work—

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I have another question. You made reference to all these phoney fronts that you were unhappy with. Who are they? In your presentation you talked about phoney fronts.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

Yes. We have looked around, and we've discovered that many of these so-called organizations are a handful of women. For example, the National Association of Women and the Law received $290,000 up to September 2007, and they are a handful of women lawyers. Who do they reflect? They go to court, they reflect only their ideology. But they don't have grassroots support.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I have another question for Ms. Graydon. You talked about the Women's Future Fund. Could you explain how that works?

[Shari Graydon]

Yes. Thank you very much.

The Women's Future Fund, as I mentioned, is a coalition of, at the moment, nine national women's organizations. We are constantly receiving applications for other under-resourced women's organizations. Our membership is made up of board members from other organizations. What we do, basically, is seek to access workplace giving programs like the United Way does. But United Way funding is not accessible to national women's organizations, so we have a two-step process. We have to get access from employers who invite us in and say, yes, you're welcome to talk to our employees. Then we speak to the employees; we talk about the work of our member groups, and employees get to decide whether or not to donate to our member groups through payroll deduction.

What we're finding is that when we have the opportunity to speak to people about the work that NAWL, LEAF, Media Watch, ACTEW, and other organizations do, people are happy to donate to us. The challenge is that it takes a long time. It took a long time for the United Way to build up its momentum, and it's going to take us another five or so years, at least, until we're self-sustaining. But that's our goal. We have been cut, all of our member groups, repeatedly over the last 15 years; we are absolutely attempting to become self-sustaining. The scope and the breadth of the work that our member groups do is simply not something that is easily funded. I know you've heard from some of our member groups; I'm not going to reiterate the great work that NAWL and CRIAW do, but it's not something that $5 or $10 membership fees are ever going to cover.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have one minute, Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Ms. Genaille, you bring an important perspective. I wonder if you could tell us why it's important for groups not just to provide concrete services but to lobby as well?

[Sheila Genaille]

I think what Ms. Landolt talked about, not being funded by the Status of Women, is a reality for all women's groups. You may not get it all the time; you may not even hear from them. We've had the same problems over the years with different departments.

But the solution isn't to cut the funding, especially for the most impoverished women. I don't know the organization that Ms. Landolt represents, but certainly Métis women would not subscribe to her thinking. You have to walk a mile in our moccasins for a while and understand that we have to have funding for the impoverished women, whether they're aboriginal women or women of colour. When you talk about women being represented, less than 0.005%...you will not find aboriginal women in executive positions, in top management positions in this country. It's ludicrous for me to sit beside this woman and listen to her rhetoric, because it does not represent women in this country. When you say you have 55,000 members out of 20 million women, that's a little bit much for me to swallow.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

We represent more women than any other organization.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Order. We are here to hear different viewpoints.

[Sheila Genaille]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We have to respect each other. You may have very diverse viewpoints; you may be ideologically totally different from each other. That is why we brought in REAL Women, because we wanted to see another perspective of it. I think it's important that we respect everybody's viewpoints. Yes, you can interject and stop them if they are not answering your questions, but let's respect each other.

Ms. Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I want to start off with Ms. Landolt.

I want comment first, Ms. Landolt, about your disparaging tone when you talked about LEAF as if they are....and your comment about what have they done. You may be aware of the rape shield law. Without their work, that would not have happened for women in this country. You may be aware of the fact that aboriginal women were not being recognized for the Canada Pension Plan at one point, even though they worked on reserves, but they now are able to receive it. You may have heard of the fact that immigrant women were not being given English as a second-language training up until the late 1980s because it was assumed that women were not going to work anyway, so why did they need language training to get settled in this country. It was only going to men. It was only as a result of the charter challenges program, which is another program that's gone...but never mind. Those are just some. I'm not going to go through the whole list of what they have accomplished. I just want to let you know that the advocacy and the work that organization has done for women over the years has been absolutely humongous and very valuable.

I want to ask you something. As I said, the immigrant women at one point, without advocacy and without an actual charter challenge--which I was involved with at that point, with LEAF--would not have actually received English as a second language. The government would not have conceded this, backed off, and provided it. Since you object to funding for advocacy, and you say in your presentation you do services for immigrant women, how would you be able to assist in that situation? What would you have done?

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

Well, first of all, a lot of what LEAF has done--for example, the rape shield law--we don't agree with. I'm a lawyer, and I have another reason for that. There are legal things. There has to be equality in the defence, a mechanism, number one. In fact, I actually worked on the actual legislation when that was drafted, along with a group of women lawyers, and I never agreed with that right from the beginning.

Some of the things LEAF has done are all right, but most of it has not been acceptable: abortion on demand, the homosexual things--we don't agree with these. They have not represented and reflected grassroots Canadian women in the majority of their cases. Believe me, I follow every one of their cases, because REAL Women of Canada has opposed them many times in the courts--again, I might say, opposed them with our own money, while they were funded by the court challenges program and the Status of Women. Again, they're a reflection of only a handful of women. They are not a reflection of grassroots Canadian women—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You and I can argue all day about whether or not we agree with the rape shield and all of the other things that were accomplished by LEAF, a great deal of it not through the women's program but actually through the court challenges program, and thousands of volunteer hours from the lawyers themselves. But my question to you was what you do for immigrant women who cannot access programs. You say we should not have advocacy.

Providing services and assisting immigrant women with, say, the English program or project isn't enough. Equality is not attained by simply giving a service. You also need to change the system. I'll tell you as an immigrant woman who has banged against the system that there was a time when immigrant women's organizations could not get a penny from government sources to provide services for their groups or organizations.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

First of all, with regard to English language training, everybody knows that immigration is a federal matter, but the education, the welfare, and the training are provincial—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

No, this was a federal program. Ms. Landolt, it was a federal program.

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

Well, then why are the provinces not doing that? Why should the Status of Women be doing that—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You're not listening to me. With respect, I need to interrupt. What I said to you is that what I was working with was a federal program delivered by HRDC Canada. It discriminated against immigrant women very directly, and if it weren't for the advocacy work done by me and other immigrant women's groups with the assistance of LEAF, they would never have changed the policy.

Let me go on to something else, because I don't want to waste time on this one. I just wanted to explain to you that there is a need for this kind of work, and hopefully you might accept that.

I want to ask some questions of Ms. Graydon, if I could. I'm sorry, I may be running out of time, and I need to share with my colleagues.

Ms. Graydon, I wanted to ask you this, and I asked this earlier. The constant discussion is that there haven't been cuts, that there is money there, because it's been redirected. The fact of the matter is, though, that the criteria for advocacy have been changed, that equality-seeking advocacy organizations can no longer get funding. How does that impact on the rights of women you work with, apart from within the specific services? Yes, I can apply to provide ESL or to provide counselling to a woman, but I cannot apply for funding to change that woman's condition or situation.